High-speed telecommunications equipment referred to as an Internet Exchange (IX), also referred to as an Internet Exchange Point (IXP), facilitates the direct exchange of Internet traffic between different Internet service providers (ISPs). The Internet Exchange generally operates to allow the member service providers to directly exchange their traffic rather than through one or more third-party networks, thereby reducing latency and bandwidth. The member service providers utilize the Internet Exchange to exchange routing information for their constituent networks to resolve paths to public destinations. Upon receiving this routing information, the member service providers may then resolve this routing information to potentially select one or more routes through a member service provider network advertised through the Internet Exchange. If these Internet Exchange routes are selected, the member service providers may begin routing traffic through the Internet Exchange to the selected routes for delivery to the traffic's intended destination. In this way, the Internet Exchange facilitates the exchange of Internet traffic between different service provider networks.
Internet Exchanges commonly employ a network device referred to as a route server to provide a simplified interconnection between multiple Internet routers of the different member ISPs and thereby enable the exchange of route information between the member service provider networks. Example details of a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) route server for an Internet Exchange can be found in Jasinska et. al, “Internet Exchange Route Server,” published by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Oct. 26, 2010, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. Typically, route servers for Internet Exchanges are implemented as modified routers, i.e., routers in which stock routing protocols have been programmatically modified to intrusively add special handling functionality for the particular needs of the Internet Exchange. For example, unlike general-purpose core routers, route processing software within a route server process routes and generate route advertisements in a certain manner to allow routing information to be exchanged directly between member service providers as if the service providers were directly connected. In this way, the core route processing software of the route server of the Internet Exchange must operate differently from high-end general purpose routers so as to render its operation as transparent to the member service providers. As such, the Internet Exchange route server becomes unsuitable for use as a general-purpose border router that would normally be used to provide connectivity between different service provider networks. This resulting separation of functionality between route servers and routers makes the software less modular and often leads to difficulties for the manufacturer in maintaining the code base for these two independent product lines.